How to read Russian. Course for beginners: learn how to read Russian letters and words

Lesson 4:

ЭТО МОЙ ДОМ. А ГДЕ ТЫ ЖИВЁШЬ?THIS IS MY HOUSE. AND WHERE DO YOU LIVE?

In this lesson you will learn:-to read the phrase: "This is my house. And where do you live?"- to pronounce 9 new consonants (т, м, й, д, г, т, ж, ш, ь) and 6 vowels (э, о, е, и, ы, ё).

Step 1: You already know the Russian alphabet and basic rules to read the Cyrillic alphabet from Lesson 2 and Lesson 3. Do you want to learn more? In this lesson we will see how to say "this is..." in Russian and ask your interlocutor where he lives.

This is how we say it in Russian: ЭТО МОЙ ДОМ. А ГДЕ ТЫ ЖИВЁШЬ? Let's learn how to read it:

Listen
to the following the audio in Russian and repeat. You will hear first
the whole Russian word and then the sound of each letter separately:

Letters: Э Т О М О Й Д О М

Sounds: [e] [t] [a] [m] [o] [j] [d] [o] [m]

Tip - how to pronounce "э":The Russian letter "э" is pronounced [e] like in the word "edit".But be careful, remember that the Russian letter "e" is pronounced [ye] like in "yellow".

Tip - how to pronounce "й":You have already learnt that "и" has a sound [i], similar to "three" or "free".

The Russian letter "й" is called "и краткое" (it is pronounced [i kratkaye]).We represent its sound as [j], that is, a shorter sound than "и" similar to the sound of "y" in "oyster" or "boy". In step 3 of this lesson you will listen to some examples with "й".

Step 2:We have shown our own house. Now let's ask your Russian friend where he or she lives.

Letters: А Г Д Е Т Ы Ж И В Ё Ш Ь ?

Sounds: [a] [g] [d] [ye] [t] [y] [zh] [y] [v] [yo] [sh] [']

Tip - how to pronounce "ы": The sound of the letter "ы" is one of the few difficult sounds in the Russian language. In this course we represent its sound like this: [y].

The sound of "ы" has no English equivalent but it resembles the sound [i:] as in "be", "mean" or "three".

We will show you a little trick that will help you to imitate this sound. Take a pencil and bite it with your teeth spreading the corners of your mouth as wide as possible. In this position pronounce the sound [i:] while listening to following audio:

Examples: ТЫ - МЫ - ВЫ - СЫР - ЖИВЁШЬ

ATENTION!After "ж" and "ш" the letter "и" is pronounced like "ы" (for example in the word живёшь).

This means that the word "живёшь" is pronounced as if it was written "жывёшь".

Tip - interesting facts about the letter "ё"- It is always stressed. This helps us to know how to pronounce any letter with "ё".
- In books and newspaper you can find it as "e".
Why? Well, it is just like that, there is no explanation.

Tip - how to pronounce "ь"

The Russian letter "ь"
is called "soft sign" ("мягкий знак" in Russian). It has no sound: it modifies the sound of the letter before it. In lesson 6 you will find a tip about how to pronounce it.

Step 3:Time to practise! Below
you can find a list of syllables that contain the letters you have
learnt in this lesson. First, read them aloud. Then, listen to the
recording in Russian and check how you did. Good luck!

ГО ДО МЫ ВЫ ГА ВИ ТЭ ГЭ

ШИ ЖИ БИ МИ ША ЖА ДЁ ЛЁЙОД БОЙ ПАЙ БЕЙ РАЙ МОЙ

Remember some useful words:

ТЫ (YOU) МЫ (WE) ДОМ (HOUSE)

Remember: This course is designed ONLY to learn how to readRussian.
If you want to learn Russian, first you need to know how to read. When
you finish this course, you can start learning how to speak Russian with
our Basic Russian course ¡Carry on, you are doing it very well!

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE FORUMDo you have any questions about this lesson, about grammar rules or vocabulary? Ask in our free forum. If you want to learn Russian, it's very important that you ask everything you don't understand:

TEST:CHECK HOW MUCH YOU REMEMBER FROM THIS LESSON

1. The letter "ё" is always stressed.truefalse

2. How do you say "we" in Russian? тывымы

3. How do you read the word "живёшь"[zhy-vyosh][zhi-vosh] [zy-ves]

4. How do you read "шик"? [shik] [shyk]

5. Does the letter "ь" have a sound? no, it doesn'tyes, its sound is [yo]